STORY OF ARTIST HWANG JAI-HYOUNG

[Anchor Lead]

There is a painter who settled down in Gangwon-do Province in the 1980s to work as a miner and drew the mining town and the workers there. Even after the mine was closed down, he remained there to paint the landscapes and people of the province. Let’s meet Hwang Jai-hyoung, a master of Korean realism painting.

[Pkg]

Vibrant spring colors instead of black soot has settled in the town of Taebaek. This is where the studio of Hwang Jai-hyoung, nicknamed the miner painter, is located. He worked as a miner in Taebaek, Samcheok, and Jeongseon during the 1980s and recreated the miners in those mining towns on canvas.

[Soundbite] Hwang Jai-hyoung(Artist) : "It was the value of sweat. I learned about the weight of labor or the depth of life afterwards, but the first thing I felt was the value of labor."

At the end of the underground tunnel, they eat their meals illuminated by fellow miners’ head lamps and risk their lives to complete their work. But they were anonymous beings that could be replaced by anyone at any moment. These miners run parallel to numerous workers of this time. Miners were once called the “flag bearers of the fatherland’s modernization” or “industry warriors.” But they gradually disappeared following the government’s new energy policy in 1989. The declining mining towns survive on campus as a somber sunset reflected on a stream mixed with coal dust and filth or as the tears of a retired miner who no longer has a place in this world like coal ashes. Hwang has expanded his perspective to include mother nature, the landscapes of life produced by compressed growth. He also created artworks made of human hair. The easily discarded hair is transformed into people’s wrinkles and facial expressions in this artist’s hands.

[Soundbite] "Tears and snot flow. It happens when we share feelings and become one."

Hwang has shed light on the dead-ends of our society for the past 40 years. But he still has a dream he wants to achieve.

[Soundbite] Hwang Jai-hyoung(Artist) : "I want to paint Baekdusan, Myohyangsan, Geumgangsan, and Hallasan Mountains. That would be so beautiful. If that can become the cornerstone of reunification, I would die happy knowing that I’ve done my job."